Europe

Highlights The US dollar is broadly higher, alongside the Japanese yen, amid heightened anxiety over the possible stalling of the global economic recovery and the fragility of the banking system.  The euro has borne the brunt of…

By Michael Pettis. With the PBoC’s currency announcement last Saturday and the surge (!) in the value of RMB on Monday (all very kindly timed to add zest to my meetings this week in Boston, New York, and Washington), you would assume that…

The euro has declined about 0.75% this week.  This seems fairly resilient, given that news stream that included the downgrade of a large French and Dutch bank, record premiums by Greece and Portugal and disappointing euro zone…

Hugh Hendry opines on strategy, George Soros and the euro. He believes the euro "is finished" for many of the same reasons I worry about the euro zone – namely that it acts like a deflationary gold standard for euro zone members.…

I am going to take the German side of the argument on the euro zone’s need for fiscal consolidation. It’s not that I like wearing a hair-shirt. Hardly. It’s because the Europeans have no other choice if they are to avoid higher interest…

Paul Krugman has it right when he says this: I hold no brief for weak financial regulation in America. But it’s a bad sign that Germans still think of this as a made-in-America crisis. The truth is that the European housing bubble was…

German daily Die Zeit published comments from an interview with famed US hedge fund investor George Soros who was sharply critical of German economic policy.  Soros claimed that Germany was "isolated" in its austere…

The European debt crisis has thus far unfolded as a sovereign debt crisis.  And the sovereign here is the national government.  This is particularly true in Greece. However in the coming months, it may become clearer that local…

Dennis Gartman made some gold-bullish but euro-bearish comments on Bloomberg on Friday. He sees the play in gold as less about fear and more about reserves, specifically the euro. He says that central banks in China or Indonesia are going…

Stress tests on European banks have emerged as a key talking point. The criteria is not clear, though European officials are apparently telling anyone who is interested that the these tests are more robust than the previous tests conducted…